


Phone Me

by VerdantMoth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:34:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Derek starts receiving calls from a stranger, struggling, and finds that it leads him back home.





	Phone Me

 

Derek’s phone buzzes, starling him from a dream involving bright colors and lots of noise. He thumps his hand across the mattress, utterly confused as to why his phone was going off at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday when he had a 5 a.m. shift at the bakery. He studies the number and sees the Beacon Hill’s area code, trying to figure out why he knows the ten digits. Eventually, he gives up and answers it, because despite having changed his number, if the pack had really been desperate they probably would have found a way to get his new one and if they had been that desperate then they really needed his help. “Hello?”

At first all he can hear is heavy music thumping and shrieking laughter, and what sounds like someone with their phone in their pocket. He hears the rustling of the something and then he hears someone breathing.  
Derek’s tired, and he can hear it in his sleep rough voice when he bites out “Hello?” a second time.

  
The voice on the other side sighs. “Yeah, no. Hey, hi. I’m here. ‘Llo.” The voice is slurred a little breathy too. Derek waits, unsure what he should do. There’s more rustling and he thinks maybe the other person is going to hang up, but then he hears a choked up noise, something between a cough and a sob.

“I’m – shit. I’m sorry. Like, god. I should call the hotline. Know I should. But ‘Ssaac works there and my dad might hear but I can’t- an there was a post- the app. Your number was, I mean you put that there, so you know.”  
There’s a loud thumping noises and then some the noise in the background cuts out and Derek can hear what he thinks is the guy sitting down.

  
“’M sorry. Not sure why I called. I wouldn’t do anything. Least, don’t think I would. Maybe. I dunno. It’s just, it’s all so much. Too much.”  
“Are you okay?” Derek doesn’t know why he asked and the guy on the other end of this phone call huffs.

“No. No I’m not. It’s just. Dude. He died today. And like, listen. We weren’t even friends. Not really. Friends by proxy maybe. I don’t know. Towards the end we were getting there. Despite the fact that I hated him though, she loved him. And I guess that was enough for me to tolerate him you know? But he died. And it wasn’t even my fault. That’s what they keep telling me. And like I get it now. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. It wasn’t.”

The voice gets quiet for a moment and Derek can’t tell if the person on the other line is even breathing or not, until he hears a low choking sounds. “She loved him and she’s fine ya know? I mean, she moved to London with her first love and all, so I guess she’s not super perfect, but she’s also not drinking herself into unconsciousness on work nights.”  
The guy sighs. “Don’t get me wrong. I happy for her. The Lizards grown on me.”

And that’s such a weird comment, but Derek doesn’t know how to deal with it. He think he should say something, offer some kind of solace, but his heart is pounding over his thoughts.

“Merlin. I don’t even know why it’s his death that got to me. Why not the others? Like, he wasn’t the first. Won’t be the last. He wasn’t my fault.”

“Who was your fault?” Derek doesn’t know why he said that, but he can tell he hit some kind of nerve, because the voice goes hysterical.

“I don’t know! Okay? Like, none of them? One of them? All of them? I don’t know. They say it wasn’t my fault, that I have nothing to be ashamed of. No guilt.”

There’s heavy breathing and Derek’s heart is echoing in his fingernails. “Are you safe?” it comes out hurried.

“Safest I’ve been since I was fifteen dude.”

“Don’t call me dude.” It just slips out of his mouth. There’s a manic laughter and then a stream of “Oh gods,” and then the line goes dead. Derek listens to the echo of the phone humming for a long time, before he rolls out of bed

figuring the sleep he might get wouldn’t be worth it.

\---

For a week, Derek waits by his phone, trying to decide if he actually wants the Beacon Hills number to call back or if he’s content to let the guy seem like a strange dream. He debates trying to call the number back, or at least googling it, but in the end, the decision is taken out of his hand.

“Yes?” He doesn’t even have it in him to be sorry for the venom in his voice. He glances at the clock and sees that it’s 2:56 a.m.

“Merlin, just like him. Just like him. Practically hear the growling.”

There’s a twinge of recognition, but Derek shoves it away.

“Man. God. I’m so fucked. Fucked straight up. Years. It’s been years since he left. Not like, decades, but like five years. Half of one. Pack’s gotten married. There’s even a baby Allison in the mix. All blue eyes and red hair.”

The name punches Derek in the gut, and he’s thrown by the word pack, but before he can say anything the voice continues, its pitch going high and strained.

“At least. Some of them are married. The ones who are left. Most of the ones who are left. Lizard married her. Everyone is happy, except Kay. I mean, she’s complicated. Like, her first love left her for his dead ex-girlfriends ex-boyfriend who used to be his enemy and then my ex-girlfriend and she started this thing but like, it’s complicated for both of them because of all the ties and Kay’s got like centuries of shit to deal with and her girlfriend is kind of feral which complicates things. But like, if Kay would stop running off to wherever to do whatever, but still. Things are complicated.”

Derek, well, Derek is lost. Half of that did not make sense and the half that did, still confused the shit out of Derek. The man on the other side starts murmuring real low, rapid, but Derek can’t make out what he’s saying. There’s more shuffling, and all of a sudden Derek hears music wailing and several voices all shouting on top of each other. There’s a lot of echo on the phone, and some awful feedback, and Derek is about read to hang up when the noise suddenly cuts out. He can hear the voice a little better, a steady stream of “Sheriff, Nurse, Alpha.”

It’s such an odd string of words that Derek can’t figure out if they’re English for a moment. All he knows is that the words are getting louder and higher and more slurred together and it’s making Derek’s neck itch and he just wants the breathing to slow down.

All at once Derek is aware that the words aren’t words anymore but hitching breaths coming in rapid paced and wheezing in and out and Derek’s starting to hyper ventilate trying to breathe with the voice.

“Hey. Hey listen. Breath. Okay? In…” he exaggerates a loud breath, then huffs it out as slowly as possible. “Out.”

He repeats the process for a solid thirty minutes, until both of them are breathing slowly and heavy. He lets the silence linger for a few more minutes. “You okay?”

There’s a long stretch of silence.

“So what time is it there anyways?”

The question is so calmly posed and so unexpected that Derek gapes at the phone.

“Huh?”

“Well, in California it’s like, 12:56 a.m. and I called a California number, but like, I dunno man. You seemed like you were fast asleep when I called.”

Derek snorts. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have been asleep anyway?”

The voice huffs and then “well, yeah. But like. Whatever.”

“It’s 3:56.”

The boy chokes. “Christ! I didn’t- Why the hell would you answer? Morgana!”

“I don’t know.”

It stays quiet for several more minutes.

“Where are you?”

Derek hesitates.

“No, yeah right. Don’t answer that. Don’t tell strangers on the phone personal information. I wouldn’t. Even if you did post it on an anonymous app.”

Derek laughs a little, and he wants to remind the guy that he didn’t put his number on an app, but he can’t find the words, so he just lets the silence linger. After a while he thinks that the other guy has hung up, but then he hears, after straining his ears, the faint thump of a heartbeat. He can’t find a rhythm in it though. It’s still a comfort.

“Anyway. It’s late. I should let you go. Might have to wake up at a decent time, so get some sleep.”

Derek nods, even though the guy can’t hear it and listens to the shuffling. Without thinking, or questioning, he suddenly blurts “What’s your name?”

There’s laughter, breathy and somewhat choked, but then he hears “uh.. Dylan.”

He can’t hear the blip of a lie, but he still knows it’s one.

“Okay. Mine is Tyler.”

The laughter strings out into a frantic noise. “Jesus, please. Don’t be an adorable dork,” and then the line goes dead.

\---

The calls come in random burst. Always after 12 and never before five a.m. Derek never knows what he’s going to get on the other end, if “Dylan” is going to be happy and exuberant, drunk and angry. He worries on the nights where there’s only silence, broken by echoing sobs and pleas for everything to end. He thinks he should google the number, find out who “Dylan” really is and inform his friends, but then he gets a call a few days later and everything is, not perfect, but manageable and Derek thinks that he can do this. He can be this life line for someone, in a way he never could be for anyone else. So he just talks to Dylan.

Dylan tells him about graduating from college and starting a business with the Lizard’s wife. It’s some consulting thing, but he won’t explain farther except to say it’s frustrating trying to conduct business from opposite sides of the globe and different time zones.

Derek tells him about Georgia, and how he works at a Bakery and lives on a strawberry farm next to a Baptist church.

“You a believer Tyler?”

Derek snorts. “No, but they make real pink-lemonade and tons of homemade goodies and the old ladies dote on me.”

“Ah. None of us are believers here. We see- well, let’s just say the Protestants would burn us at stakes.”

Derek laughs.

On one of the nights that Dylan is quiet, he learns that Dylan’s best friend and his partner are a vet and boutique owner respectively. “They’re trying to adopt. There’s this kid. This girl, blond hair and big eyes. She reminds- “  
It stays quiet for a long time, so Derek tells him how he moved away from Georgia and to Texas. “Dallas. Right in the center. There’s this giant three story mall and it’s got an ice skating rink. I’m not great, but I had a friend, kinda, a while back, and he- well anyways. Skating rinks were kind of a thing. Not a good thing. I don’t think that he would actually be happy being remembered in this way but still.”

“I had a friend like that too. God. It’s not my fault. Not my fault.”

He doesn’t call Derek for two weeks after that.

\---

“And like, listen. This wall is literally 100 feet. If I fall. Holy Morgana. Catwoman better fucking love me for this. You hear me you ghostly feline? You better love me for doing this in your name.”

“Dylan. Its 1 a.m. Why the hell are you climbing a rock wall? Are you drunk? Does anyone know where you are?”

“Because she’s dead. Probably. And I dunno. Maybe.”

“Stay on the phone with me until you’re down alright?”

He does.

Derek moves to Michigan a year after the first phone call. He tells Dylan about Lake Michigan, and about running through the woods. He leaves out doing it as a wolf, and he suddenly realizes that Dylan has never called on a full moon.

He sometimes gets flashes of recognition about Dylan, like he should know who he is. He talks about packs, and betas, and anchors. Derek wonders if it’s just because he knows they’re both keeping the same secretes. But other times its smaller, more personal things.

“Sheriff married the Nurse today. Sounds like a television. Show. Makes him my step-brother. God, makes the scarf wearing bastard my brother too. Brother-in-law.” And then he’s screaming and Derek doesn’t know what to do. He never knows what to do on these nights. He just lets Dylan scream himself raw until he’s surrounded by silence and the phone dies in his hand.

It’s a Wednesday, 6 in the evening, and the call shocks him. “He left today, you know. Walked right out of our lives with no explanation. No goodbye. No forwarding address. Bet the asshole didn’t even look back.”

  
Derek wonders if Dylan will finally tell him who “he” is. Derek thinks he is Dylan's lover, but he can’t be sure. He can’t tell if Dylan loves him or hates him, or if they were even friends. All he knows is that “he” left six years ago, with some spare change.

“Man. He might be dead for all I know. His sister says he’s not, but that’s all she says. And she doesn’t really like us so who’s to say she isn’t lying?”

Derek hums. It reminds him of Cora, and her connection to the pack. He knows she’s in contact with them, but he doesn’t know if she actually tells them anything.

“I could look him up you know. I could look you up. My dad- like, no. I mean, he doesn’t have Facebook of anything, but it can’t be that hard to find someone. I’ve got the resources. Could look up you while I’m at it. Don’t know why I don’t. Actually. I do, but still.”

Derek hesitates because he’s not entirely sure what to say.

  
“I just- you know I really thought that he’d come back. I thought that somewhere deep down in that cold heart he cared about us. Thought we were family. “

Derek wonders about him. He doesn’t know much about Dylan’s life, but he knows that there are dangers that Dylan is dancing around. And he doesn’t know about “he” but from what little he’s gathered, “he” didn’t have a great life. Sounds really rough and Derek wonders if he just wanted a place to feel safe. If he ran until he found somewhere he wasn’t always looking over his shoulder. Derek is still running, but he does miss the idea of family. Derek wants to go back to Beacon Hills. But he doesn’t think they want him back and he doesn’t know how to rebuild all the bridges he burned. Maybe, like Derek, “he” is just waiting for some sign that they want him back, so he tells Dylan this.

There’s a quick intake of breath and then “Bastard. He left. He left and never said anything to us. He doesn’t get to come back via request. He just has to come on his own.”  
The phone’s static screams in his ears.

\---

Derek waits for six months for another call. He moves to New York and gets a job at a café, and then another one at a bookstore. He keeps himself busy, and he contacts Cora because he’s desperate. He learns about her life as she moves around the world, and he wants to go to California with her but he can’t.

She tells him bits and pieces about the pack, but she never mentions Stiles and Derek thinks it’s strange but he doesn’t ask about it. He doesn’t ask anything actually.

Instead he lets Cora tell him about Scott and Isaac, and their struggle to adopt a kid. He tells him about Malia and Kira and their weird relationship tango. “I think they’re finally ready to be official. They realize that the pack doesn’t mind it and there’s no funny feelings except for their own. But who knows. They’re hot and cold anyway.”

She tells him about Danny and Ethan, who just moved back. “Scott welcomed them back into the path easily. Ethan’s really subdued these days. He and Danny own some computer company but its kind of a front for some government thing Danny does.”

Derek hums as she talks about Lydia and Jackson. “Their little girl is so precious and Scott is really excited they’re moving back to Beacon Hills. And they’re bringing their baby girl. She’s so precious.”

Derek interrupts her. “Moving back? From where, why?”

Cora sighs. “London. Business problems.”

Derek pauses. “What, why?”

“I don’t know Derek. I’m a photography major.”

She won’t tell him anymore but she tells him about Melissa and the Sheriff and their new house. She doesn’t mention Stiles at all.

“Scott ask about you, you know. Every time he ask about me and James. Says he’s got room in the pack for us, easily.”  
At first, he thinks she means herself and James, but then realizes she means them.

They talk more often after that, until she hesitantly tells him “I’m moving back to Beacon Hills.”

Derek stays quiet for a long time.

“I’d like you to come too. Meet James.”

Derek wants, so desperately to go, but something still feels so wrong. “Tell me about Stiles, Cora.”

There’s a long stretch of silence that reminds him of Dylan and he wonders if she’s hung up like he sometimes used to, but then he hears, “It’s-“

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Stiles is gone, Derek. Almost two years now. He left.”

“Why?”

“No one knows. We think there was someone in his life, a lover maybe. Someone he called at odd hours and wouldn’t tell us about. We don’t- look. He got bad a couple of times, but then he started doing better and we all thought he was fine, but then he just- “

“Every now and then his father gets a postcard. They’re never from anywhere in particular, no discernible names, which, ya know, odd for postcards, and they’ve usually been twelve hundred places so it’s impossible to tell where they were first.”

Derek is quiet for a long time, and then he quietly speaks. “Thanks. I’ll call you soon.”

He doesn’t. Not for three months. He quits at the bookstore, and he contemplates Dylan, but he mostly just runs in circles around New York.

And then, on a Friday, exactly three years to the minute he gets another call.

“Please, please, please, just make it end. Let it stop.”

“Dylan? What- make what stop?”

“My head, these voices and the noise, all of it. Make it stop I can’t live here anymore.”

“Where?”

“Here, here! Home, planet earth! Life! God just let me die, please.”

“Dylan, I- it’ll be okay.”

“No, no no no. It won’t.” And suddenly Dylan is screaming and sobbing and he’s apologizing and Derek is suffocating but he needs Dylan to be okay and he’s going to look into the bleeding in his chest later but for now, “just breathe, okay? In… Out…”

Dylan keeps breathing and eventually, Derek can hear his heart calming. When Dylan speaks, Derek winces at the noise coming from what he assumes is a very raw throat.

“Listen. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and I’m about to be a dick, but I need you to do me a favor.”

It throws Derek for a loop, but he hums his agreement.

“I need.”

It stays quiet for a moment, and then “I need you to call the police okay? The ones in California. In Beacon Hills. But I need you to tell them not to put the Sheriff on this call. Anyone but the Sheriff okay? He can’t come to this scene. Not him.”

Derek’s heart blips in his ears. “What scene?”

“Tell the police that- the old, no, not there. Uhm. Okay. So there’s a boat house. It belongs to a friend- or it did. It’s abandoned now. They sold it. Yeah, tell them uh. There’s a body. Not a murder- suicide of course. Just-“

There’s some really heavy breathing for a long time and Derek knows that he’s supposed to say something, to try and stop this but he’s never been good with words and even worse with emotional situations.

“Dylan I- listen is there anyone I can call? Family? There’s- you should have someone to help you. Someone who knows you, who cares…”

“No one cares. No one should. I don’t deserve it anyway.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“Just-“

Derek hears a lot of movement and what he thinks are pills rattling. He can hear the bottle pop open and then the phone gets dropped and he hears John cursing.

“Ty, please?”

“I- please don’t make me do this.”

“I know. I never thought I would do this to someone, but I just, what if it’s my dad? He can’t be the one to find me. It’s gotta be someone distant. Someone who might not be so traumatized. Please.”

“I-“ Derek gets it. He’s a nameless, faceless stranger. He will move on from this even, in a way that Dylan‘s family and friends might be spared from. And he can do that. Can help Dylan in that way. Derek can’t explain it but he cares about Dylan. He feels like he knows him more than he actually does, but, Derek has wanted to die, so he gets it.

“Alright.”

“Thanks. So uh, listen, give it, uhm.”

Derek waits.

“Listen, wait till I call back.”

Derek listens to the phone’s dial tone and then pulls out his laptop. He suddenly just needs to be home, with his sister and the pack, and so he buys the first ticket he can find. It leaves in about two hours so he packs what little he has a heads to the airport, hoping that Dylan calls before he gets on the flight.

Dylan doesn’t call for twenty four hours. Derek is home by then, tentatively making his way to Scott and Isaac’s with Cora and James. They finally got the adoption to go through and he meets a bubbly six year old Erica who is nothing like her name sake in her friendliness but everything like her in her ferocity. The Sheriff claps him on the back, but Derek can taste the copper twang of sorrow on him, can see it in his shoulders and his eyes. Melissa, too, wears it on her face, but it’s more so in the rough edges of her cheeks and the turn of her lips.

Danny and Ethan linger on the edges, and Derek sizes them up before sticking out a hand for Ethan. Lydia and Jackson nod and offer Allison to him.

He finds it’s easier to reintegrate into the pack then he thought it would be. But he’s on edge, waiting for the inevitable phone call. The pack knows somethings up, but they don’t push him. So, when three days after he arrives, Derek slips out from dinner to answer a phone call, no one says anything.

“Hey.”

“Thought you might have changed your mind.”

“Nah. Had to get some things in order. Cancel cards. Pay bills. Sell the apartment. Mail some letters.”

“Right.”

There’s silence for a long time. It’s not comfortable the way the others were. It’s heavy and it makes Derek’s spine ache and he doesn’t know when, but he’s picked all of the skin off one of his fingers.

“So listen, when I hang up, give it an hour okay? That should- should make sure it sticks.”

‘’You’re sure about this?”

“No.”

“You can change your mind.”

“No. No I really can’t.”

There’s more shuffling, and Derek hears rattling that he thinks belongs to pills again.

“Okay. Okay it’s time. Alright. So. Thanks, you know. For being there all this time. I appreciate it. And uh- I’m. Listen. I'm sorry it had to be you. Ya know?”

“I know.”

“So. This is goodbye for good then.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

“And thanks again.”

“You’re welcome, Dylan.”

“It’s actually Stiles.”

The line goes dead before Derek can speak.

 

\----------

 

Derek has never been under any illusions about his Ability to Emotionally Cope. He's not, okay? He's had a traumatic life, despite a rather innocuous start, but even the beginning was shrouded in having to hide certain aspects of his life and ignore obvious signals in other people's life. You can't go around telling innocent teenage girls that they're six weeks pregnant or little old men that the storm coming in is going to totally wreck the rows of tomatoes they were about to spend six hours planting, or bratty upper class wives that their sons are banging the pool boys and their husbands are banging the babysitter, and the reason they're breaking out is their PA is feeding them buttery, fatty, cookie bars instead of organic oat bars (and really, shouldn't they be aware of that one on their own?) Suffice to say, that Derek is kind of a pro at ignoring the obvious in favor of pretending to be a regular Joe.

It doesn't make him feel any better about the dial tone screaming in his ear. It doesn't tell him how to dial the police. It doesn't tell his legs to carry him back in the house or his mouth to move and tell the pack that he knows where Stiles is.

Except, that no, he really doesn't. Yeah, you do, he thinks, but you don't want to. He tries to think- was there ever a conversation where Dy-Stiles was sober? Ever a moment where his voice really rang clear across the phone lines? Yeah, he sometimes left the cacophony of noises for a quieter venue, but his voice was always muddled with sorrow or anger, sometimes hysteric euphoria. His words always carried the weigh of screaming matches and weeping and that can change natural cadences and tones right? Plus- it had been five years at the beginning and Stiles had probably done some growing up. He knows of at least sixteen male werewolves in London who were from America, and there are at least 832 Allison's in California and most Peters tend to be raging homicidal maniacs (okay not really, but still.)

He walks back in the house numbly and stares at the pack. It's like he never left the room, Cora is talking to Malia and Kira, both of whom are standing jut far enough apart to not be standing together. Issac and Scott are huddled near the food talking to Melissa, who is laughing. James and Danny and Ethan are all hovering in the living room, not comfortable enough to claim a seat and not really interested in socializing. Jackson is cooing to his daughter while little Erica pats the baby and Lydia tries to keep it gentle. Derek looks for the Sheriff but he's not in the kitchen or the living room. He can smell him though, all copper sadness and traces of whiskey, so he follows his nose up the stairs and into an extra bedroom, filled with Stiles' old things. "In case he ever wants to come home, so he knows he will always be welcomed." The sheriff is sitting on the bed, an old orange stripped shirt in his hands. Derek takes in the trembling of his wrist and the water in his eyes, and he's suddenly furious because this pack? This pack is a god-awful joke and none of them deserve to be in this house. He want's to go down the stairs and growl at them, sink his claws and fangs into their skin and make them ache the way Stiles had ached, the way the sheriff was aching, the way he ached.

Instead he asks "did you look for your son?"

The sheriff gives him a nod. "Stiles is smart, you know? He keeps all of his transactions to cash, except for the automatic withdrawals he'd had set up previously. I can't tell that he's used his laptop. Never logs into his facebook account and he doesn't have many other sites. Lydia won't give me any kind of access to the consulting servers and Danny wouldn't ping those servers anyway. I tried using my resources at work, but his car has sat in the same parking garage two towns over since he left and they never really did start trusting me after everything." The sheriff pulls in a deep breath, but Derek can hear how it catches in his chest and his heart stutters. "I tried, you know, getting the pack to sniff him out. Gave them each and everyone of his post cards but they- well the post cards had been all over and Stiles left voluntarily. Told them he was going away for a bit, to sort things, and that he needed time. Scott seems to think he'll come back on his own." The sheriff scoffs. "Scott never was the brightest, but he's the alpha you know? They follow his lead." He wrings the shirt around in his hands. "Sometimes I, well. Sometimes I think I see him. Not here, but on the edges of town. Just in passing. Always wanted to run after him, but Melissa said it was just wishful thinking. But I know Stiles. He's smart and stubborn and loyal, and those things, sometimes they compete. I don't believe he's really left. I think he's just hiding. I just don't know why."

Derek nods. "I know where he is, but we have to hurry. You should call your department and get them to send an ambulance. I'll explain on the way."

The sheriff's head jerks up and Derek can see the questions behind his eyes so he holds up a hand. "We should go, now."

\---

The drive there is a blur of muddled explanations and harsh accusations. The sheriff doesn't understand why Stiles called Derek ("how'd he even get your number?") or why Derek didn't tell him all of this three days ago ("What do you mean you didn't know? You should have been able to hear his voice!" and "Oh my god. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern and seventeen is a goddamned billboard Derek!") The sheriff yells at the department and Derek is suddenly really worried the sheriff is going to burst a blood vessel and lose his job and burst Derek's ear drums all at the same time.

They arrive at the scene minutes before the ambulance and Derek pauses just long enough to pick up traces of heartbeat before the sheriff is breaking down the front door. He runs in screaming for Stiles and Derek yanks him down the stairs dread climbing down his spine in tendrils. The heart beat is all wrong. He can't really remember Stiles heartbeat from before- just that it was always a little fluttery. He remembers the loose beats he could sometimes catch over the phone and they were always steady, if not a little too rapid. This beat though, Derek isn't sure it counts as a beat. It seems to stop and then start, too fast one moment too slow the next, like it can't catch its own rhythm. The sheriff sees him first, because Derek is distracted getting them down the dark steps, and he collapses to his knees over his son chanting "Stiles" over and over. His hands hover like he wants to collect the boy in his arms but he doesn't quite know where to grab. Derek sinks next to him and puts his hand over the blue (quiet, oddly enough, he thinks) mouth. "He isn't breathing, when is the ambulance going to get here?"

The sheriff doesn't respond, just begins breathing into his boy's mouth and pushing on his chest, begging him not to leave again. The paramedics come down shortly after and Derek has to physically restrain the older man, so that they can get to the body.

\---

There's a lot of confusion at the hospital. Most of the pack had shown up, because the sheriff had called Melissa on the way. Derek doesn't talk to them. Doesn't want to be near them, really, but he feels like he owes it to the sheriff to stand there as he brokenly explains how they'd found Stiles curled up on the floor. 32 different prescription bottles around him. They don't know how much he took, or what he took really, because they had all been open and they all had some pills left in them, and there were several dates. "It's like he just kept getting prescriptions and stock piling them." They all want to know how Derek knew, and Scott lets his alpha eyes burn trying to force Derek into answers, but Derek isn't really in this pack, even if Cora might be.

In the end, Melissa sends them all to their own homes, but the sheriff convinces her to let Derek linger, and if he's still there when visiting hours are over, she pretends not to notice.

\---

Stiles doesn't wake up for a week. Derek doesn't leave his side the entire time, and Melissa tries to console the sheriff, but the truth is, because they don't know what is in his system, or for how long it had been there, they don't want to do too much. They monitor his blood levels and his oxygen intake and his brain waves and his heart beat. "There's a very real chance he had already taken some before he called you Derek. We just don't know." The pack stays away for the most part, and Derek is surprised to find that he doesn't feel the tug to go see them, the way he felt one to come back to Beacon Hills.

\---

When Stiles finally wakes up, Derek can't decide if it's better or worse. He's almost feral, with no real sense of recognition in his eyes. The doctors are unsure what to make of it. They scan his brain and it seems normal, and they check his blood and its clean, and they test his lungs and they work, but the man before them is not Stiles. He has to be restrained, after he punches one nurse and kicks another. He curses at Melissa every time she comes near him and eventually they assign him a new nurse who Stiles only snarls at. He has moments of lucidity when Lydia visits with Allison, and Stiles laughs cruel and vicious as he asks her "did the screaming wake you? or was the distance to far for your cold heart to cover?" Jackson leads them out growling at him, but Stiles just snarls right back. Ethan comes with Danny and they have to leave almost immediately as Stiles thrashes, trying to break free of the restrains swearing he'll kill Ethan. Kira doesn't make it in the door before Stiles looks at her and says "you'll just leave us again," and Malia lunges at him. Stiles just laughs again, loud and long.

Issac doesn't visit, too afraid of what might happen. Scott shows up last, two weeks later, hanging in the doorway as Stiles sleeps. It's not a restful, peaceful thing, because they've started sedating him and even then Stiles is fighting against everything. "You always did make a sucky wolf. Can't tell lies from the truth. But you never really looked too hard did you? Always seeing what you wanted instead of whats real." Scott stares at him. "That's not true." Stiles shrugs. "I looked for you, after a while. But you left. You wanted to go. I asked you to stay." Stiles shakes his head. "Everyone's got blood on their hands Scotty. Even you." Derek doesn't think the tangy odor of Scott's grief is right, finds it to be too much like pity to fit the situation. They keep trying though, showing up at odd times, hoping to catch Stiles both awake and calm.

The sheriff eventually tells the pack not to come back, that he'll call them when the situation is better. They move Stiles to a different ward after a month because they can't decide if his mood swings are some kind of unrecognized brain damage or if that is just who Stiles is now. Derek hangs around as often as he can, but Stiles ignores his existence. The sheriff spends every moment away from work with Stiles, talking to his son about every mundane thing he can. Derek usually lets him have the illusion of peace, listening to Stiles fluttery heartbeat from the hallway.

\---

Eventually Stiles calms down. His temperament evens out and he can talk to his dad without dissolving into nonsensical screaming. They remove his restraints and he cooperates with the nurses as they check his vitals and give him meals. The sheriff gently prods him about what happened, and they're all surprised to learned how little Stiles can remember. "I sold my apartment. And I got in a cab. I..." he hesitates, "there was a phone call and some water. And then I woke up in this room?" He shakes his head. "I don't- there are these like, flashes. Screaming, and the pack- only it wasn't really the pack. It was like," his fluttery heartbeat speeds up, "like, they were just copies of themselves or something. I don't know."

The Sheriff pats his hand. "Okay son. It's okay."

\---

They let Stiles go home two months later. The Sheriff still doesn't let the pack around, but he doesn't say anything about Derek setting up camp on his couch. Just throws an blanket over him at night and leaves him a mug of coffee in the mornings. Melissa hovers about, like she wants to say something, but the sheriff just shakes his head. Stiles doesn't speak to Derek, just lingers in the doorways sometimes.

\---

Derek has told Cora broken pieces of the story. About the phone calls. She doesn't say much back and never asks any questions, but sometimes he thinks she gets it. What it is, he doesn't know, but he is thankful either way. She does however, pull up an app and spend hours scrolling through feeds three years back. Finally she shows him a post and he kind of wants to laugh because he was right, he never posted his number. But someone posted a number that was only one digit off from his.

\---

Four months after the day they found Stiles, Derek is out running when he gets an idea. He stops just outside of the sheriff's house and listens. Melissa and the sheriff are both at work, but he can hear dishes being moved about in the kitchen so it means Stiles is awake. He pulls out his phone and dials. He can hear the phone ringing in the house, and the noise in the kitchen goes quiet. At first he really thinks Stiles is going to ignore it, but then he hears him shuffling through the rooms. He listens as Stiles walks up the stairs and a door closes.

"Hello?"

Derek doesn't say anything for a moment, suddenly unsure.

"Derek?"

"How'd you know."

Stiles sighs. "I didn't. I suspected, because I could see you standing outside like the creeper you are, but I wasn't totally sure."

Derek nods. The silence stretches out between them for a long time, and then Derek can hear Stiles sniffling. "I'm sorry Derek."

Derek nods again. "Yeah, I know. But its okay."

"Not really."

"No, actually. It is. Maybe its not great, but it's okay. And it'll keep getting better."

\---

Stiles responds to him more after that. He sits next to him on the couch as the food network plays in the background and shows him the website he and Lydia developed to help others out with supernatural issues. He follows Derek to meetings with Cora, tension filled lunches as she and James plan for a wedding and debate staying in Beacon Hills or moving back to South America. "I thought it would feel like home here, but I think I just wanted it to." Derek nods. He understands that. "It's okay if it doesn't. We'll keep in touch. You can always visit." He's surprised to find that he actually means that.

He lets Stiles hang around the reconstruction site of the old Hale home when the sheriff's house gets too small and stifling. Sometimes the sheriff drives by on patrol and sometimes Derek smells Scott on the edges, but mostly he just listens to Stiles talk. "It wasn't hard you know. Cora never really knew me so she wouldn't have recognized me unless she was looking, and I could always pay a trucker to mail the letter from a random city. None of the rest of them really ever got the hang of their abilities aside from Ethan, and he and Danny actually don't stay here much. Danny travels for work and Ethan always goes with him. They're gone more often than not."

\---

Malia eventually leaves the pack, to go off with some coyote pack into a jungle somewhere. She doesn't give many specifics and Kira follows her without much thought. Jackson and Lydia move back to London, since Stiles is there to take over the stateside issues with the company. Derek finally learns that Issac doesn't actually own a boutique, actually, but instead a really nice, high-end clothing store that almost exclusively employs supernatural people. Most of those people are drifters, but Derek sees a few he thinks might stick around. A young beta with anger issues, his girlfriend, also a beta, but not quite a beta?, and their friend, who is decidedly human but also clearly in the know. Scott hangs around them, and Derek doesn't say anything, but he suspects Scott is building a new pack, whether he realize it or not.

Stiles doesn't seem too concerned about it. He just trails after Derek and asks him about Georgia and Texas and Michigan. "You already know most of this, Stiles!"

"It's different though. Knowing it's you. I mean, a strawberry farm? Church? Don't tell me you actually never went to that church! Prime time to find out if you'd be struck by lightening!"

\---

The Sheriff looks on disapprovingly when he catches Derek and Stiles curled up on the couch. "There's a bed upstairs that'll fit you both. Or two beds in the perfectly rebuilt house in the preserve." Derek doesn't think he actually minds though, because he likes having Stiles around. It's in the way he constantly finds ways to touch Stiles. Patting his head, bumping his shoulder, small things to reassure himself that Stiles is actually there. Actually real. Melissa sometimes leaves them to stare at the t.v. while she goes off with Scott and Issac and Erica. Sometimes she babysits the child in the house while the three of them sit on the porch drinking. "What did you do with the letter, dad?" The sheriff stares at his son, hard. "I don't need to read it or something.. do I?"

Stiles stays quiet for a long time, and Derek can hear the stuttering of the sheriff's heart. Can hear the not-rhythm of Stiles' heart, and he thinks he should leave them to this moment but then Stiles sighs. "No. You can probably burn it."

\---

Derek is running up to the new Hale house, wondering when he's going to call it home, instead of "the Hale house." He's a Hale. It's his house. He'd called Cora earlier, and she mentioned she'd be visiting in a week. Derek smiled, somewhat stunned to realize she left months ago. He is startled to find Stiles on his porch, instead of finding him sprawled across the leather couch in the living room or stealing fizzy waters from the fridge. He takes a moment to listen to the heartbeat, but Stiles' heart has never really found the right pattern. It's always stuttering and flighty and it's baffling doctors all over California because aside from not really having an actual beat, its a perfectly healthy heart.

"Are you going to tell us this time?"

"Tell you what?"

"That you're leaving.

Derek stares blankly. "I am?"

Stiles stands, dragging his hands through his hair, and Derek stares at his wrist, noting that they're still kind of bony, like the rest of Stiles. He wonders if there's ever going to be enough meat on the other male.

"Listen. I'm like, really thankful okay? I was in a bad place and I put you in a bad situation and you've never held it against me and you saved my life, and look. You and I, we don't owe each other anything. I get it. But I probably won't handle it all that well when you just disappear and I'm left wondering. So when you go, just, keep in contact this time. Okay?"

Derek studies Stiles, with his too bony body and off-rhythm heart beat. There aren't as many scars as one would expect from someone who'd experiences all that the younger male had. Derek thinks, that it's perhaps because all of Stiles' scars are internal. On his spirit or soul or whatever it is that makes a person who they are. He wonders how many of those he gave to Stiles. He watches the way Stiles pulls at invisible threads and wonders if maybe Stiles is supernatural after all, because he seems to call to Derek's wolf the way pack does. It doesn't surprise Derek, this revelation. Because he thinks he knew all along. Knew from the second phone call that Stiles was pack. Stiles was home. He wonders if Stiles feels the pull too, and if that is what caused him to go off the rails. Derek leaving, the broken Beacon Hills pack crumbling from the inside. Derek sometimes thinks that maybe it really would be better if werewolves didn't exist. If they were fully wolf or fully human. Because the two sides seem to desire different kinds of connections. Simple connections with simple dynamics for the beast as opposed to the complexities of human relationships and emotions. He can't explain it, but he wonders if that's why Scott's pack didn't work; too many different complexities trying to find the same simplicity.

Maybe Derek's just the broken one. Who knows anymore?

"I'm not leaving Stiles." Stiles nods and his lip quivers some, so Derek sits next to him. Decides that he likes the strangeness of his new heartbeat and if it stays this way forever it's actually okay because it fits Stiles. He carefully picks up Stiles' hand, wrapping the freezing appendage in his own. They stay quiet and watch the sun set. Derek knows that the sheriff is at home, trying to mend things with Melissa. He doesn't know if he wants them to work out or not, but he wants the sheriff to be happy. He likes the way he includes Derek easily in things. Always invites him out when he and Stiles get lunch or dinner. Lets him tag along grocery shopping. Sometimes comes and sits on the porch and drinks whiskey and pretends he doesn't see the way Derek watches Stiles. Personally, Derek's favorite moments are when its the three of them in the noise of the preserve. That is when the tightness in his chest completely vanishes and the sun light filters down on his shoulders and actually reaches his core with it's warmth. He squeezes Stiles' hand.

"I'm not leaving. I'm finally home."


End file.
